1937
1936 1937 1938 Events * George Orwell becomes one of many international volunteers helping the Spainish Republicans fight the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. His experiences in the Trotskyist POUM militia are later published in Homage to Catalonia. * The Left Book Club publishes George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier. * The Irgun, a Zionist terrorist group, is organized. * Upton Sinclair publishes The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America. * Conservative advocate for appeasement and anti-Semite Joseph Kennedy, Sr. is named U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain. * Marx brothers' film A Day At The Races is released. * Xie Bokang publishes Renshi xingzheng dagang, or An Account of Personnel Administration. * Canadian Prime Minister MacKenzie King meets Adolf Hitler. * Lincoln Tunnel is opened. * Marijuana Tax Act passed in the United States. * William Casey graduates St. John's University Law School. Will later support Nicaraguan Contra terrorism as Ronald Reagan's CIA Director. * Assassination attempt on Italian Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani in Addis Ababa. Italian colonial authorities respond with a massacre of Ethiopians. * Italy withdraws from the League of Nations. * Joesph Stalin orders execution of Abraham R. Gotz, former Social-Revolutionary terrorist and Kerensky supporter * German communist Willi Munsenberg breaks with Stalin over the Moscow Trials. * Buryat communist puppet leader Elbekdorji Rinchino is executed in Moscow with colleagues. Buryat communist puppet leader Tsyben Zhamtsarano is arrested. * Sakha folklorist Platon Sleptsov-Oyunsky dies in a Moscow prison. * Lev N. Karakhan dies. * Chen Changheng dies. Timeline * January 3 - First science fiction convention in Leeds, England. * January 23 - Seventeen leading COSU members go on trial in Moscow, charged with participating in a Trotskyist plot to overthrow Joseph Stalin. * January 26: British High Commissioner Sir Arthur Wauchope orders recutiment of large numbers of Jewish policemen for British Palestine Mandate. * January 27: German Chancellor Adolph Hitler demands return of German colonies in Africa and Asia. * February 16: Dupont patents nylon. * April 27: The Basque town of Guernica (population 7,000) is bombed by German Ju-52s flown by the German volunteers of the Condor Legion, an attack in support the right-wing rebellion of Spanish General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. The town was 70% destroyed. * April 28: Saddam Hussein born near Tikrit, Iraq. * May 1: U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs act of neutrality to keep U.S. out of the upcoming war. * May 8: Author Thomas Pynchon is born. * May 13: Author Roger Zelazny is born. * May 28: Neville Chamberlain becomes British Prime Minister. * May 29: Billy Carter is born in Plains, Georgia. * June 18: John D. Rockefeller IV is born. * June 27: Joe Louis, the "Brown Bomber," knocks out James J. Braddock to become heavy weight champion of the world. * July 7: Marco Polo Bridge Incident begins with a clash between Japanese and Chinese soldiers. * July 9: KMT dictator Gen. Chaing Kai-shek moves four best German trained divisions to reinforce the 29th Army across the Yellow River. This move violated the 1935 He-Umetsu Agreement. * July 9: Marco Polo Bridge Incident ends with a ceasefire agreement. * July 25: Japanese and Chinese forces clash again. Chinese suffer 5000 casualties. * July 30: Moshe Shermister incorporates Hashmira Company Ltd. * August: Li Zhen 李震 joins the Chinese Communist Party. He will rise in its ranks as a secret policeman and die under suspicious circumstances on October 22, 1973. * August 11: Iraqi General Bakr Sidqi and Major Mohammad Ali Jawad, clients of Fascist Italy, are assassinated at Mosul Airport. * August 13: Battle of Shanghai begins with Japanese landings on the banks of the Huanhpu River and a Japanese naval bombardment of Chinese positions. * August 21: "Yellow Peril" racism in the motherland of communism. Stalin and Molotov sign Resolution 1428-3266ss, "On the Exile of the Korean Population from the Border Regions of the Russian Far Eastern Region," internally deporting all Soviet Koreans to Central Asia, to southern Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, the Aral Sea administrative regions and Lake Balkash region. * September 4: Soviet defector Ignace Reiss is "liquidated" by Soviet agents in Chamblandes (near Lausanne), Switzerland. This will cause his wife, Elisabeth Poretsky, to break with the Communist Party. * September 27: Death of the last Bali tiger. A dual "triumph" of Dutch colonialism and Balinese Hinduism. * October 5: British expat Willie Wheeldon is arrested in the Soviet Union. * November 5: Adolph Hitler brings together Germany's foreign minister and four senior military leaders for a 'war council' to achieve territorial space for Germany to survive as a great power. * November 5: Five Japanese divisions make amphibious landings near Hangzhou. * November 11: Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese forces are forced to fall back to Shanghai. * December 12: Rape of Nanjing. Japanese troops enter Nanjing and begin nightmarish attacks against Chinese civilian population. Between 50,000 and 200,000 are killed and an estimated 20,000 women are raped. * December: French colonial police raid homes of Neo-Destour activists in Tunis, Monastir and Zaghouan and discover explosives and arms. * December 11: Italy withdraws from the League of Nations. * December 12: Panay Incident; America avoids war against Japan. * December 25: British expat Willie Wheeldon sentenced to death by Soviet authorities.